THE BRIDGES

by Tarjei Vesaas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 2, 1970

Tarjei Vesaas, who died this year at the age of seventy-two in his native Norway, produced over twenty-five novels and this is the fifth to appear here. Director Ingmar Bergman's works--these days a convenient Scandinavian referral--have occasionally been used as a touchstone. Certainly both turn out landscape-dominated characters and situations which produce a singular agitation within a pristine quiet. Although Vesaas' symbolism glistens like a skeleton outside the body and the dialogue, in translation, sounds like (as Stephen Leacock said of Ibsen) two men sawing wood. (""What are you listening for?/ You're listening yourself./ Yes, of course I am./ Why on earth should we?"") This is the story of adolescent awakenings to the realization that a knowledge of death precedes a true understanding of life. The children in Paradise, Torvil and Aud (Torvil's the male), who shared an idyllic childhood and youth, stumble across the corpse of a newborn baby in a forest, and are overseen and contacted by the young mother/murderer, Valborg. Their youth and love shelter her but Torvil breaks the magic ring of unity by declaring his passion for Valborg. At the close all go their separate but strangely renewed ways, bridged into an approaching maturity. Not as magical as The Ice Palace (1968) or The Birds (1969), perhaps because so much depends upon dialogue, but tiffs haunting, far country is worth a visit.

Pub Date: Sept. 2, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION